What Your Favourite Sex Position Says About You
The validity and prevalence of internet personality tests based on sexual tastes and their potential consequences.
So, Valentine’s Day is coming up and having seen several blog posts about love, I decided to write about something that applies to a wider range of us at this time of year — sex. Facebook IQ reports that the week leading up to Valentine’s Day is the time of year when people with the status of ‘single’ mention sex the most. Also, with condom sales increasing by about 25% (according to Durex) around Valentine’s day, and innumerable surveys claiming that sex is one of the things that people want most on Valentine’s day, it is clearly on peoples’ minds.
In trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to write about, I came across a bunch of websites that claimed to be able to use your sexual tastes to test your personality and vice versa. These websites included articles such as: “What Your Favourite Sex Position Says About You,” “The Best Sex Position For Your Personality,” and, my personal favourite, “What Your College Course Says About Your Sexual Preferences.” In case you don’t feel like reading the whole article, I figure most of us are in Psych, so apparently this is how we all like it:
“You tend to prey on the more vulnerable person, it’s not your fault they intrigue you. You get off on seeing right through their defensive sense of humour and cheerful deposition. You can’t help but analyse their sexual behaviour, and make mental notes throughout sex. Therefore, you can appear distant, cold and a bit of a bore in the sack.”
Mental notes? I just bring a notebook along and write things down while they happen (sarcasm). Anyways, now that we all know how boring we are in bed, seeing all of these online tests made me wonder if there is any validity to them, and if we can’t say that there is, are they causing more harm than good? I decided to focus on tests that claim to predict your personality from your favourite sex position.
For starters, it does not seem that there have been many studies done on sex positions and personality. One that I did find looked specifically at the relationship between personality and being a “top,” “bottom,” or “versatile,” in Chinese gay men. It did find some strong correlations, however these sexual positions refer to individual roles rather than to specific body positioning and thus the study does not refer to sex positions in the same sense that the online tests do (Hart & Zheng 2012). That being said, there have been many studies that have found correlations between personality test scores and sexual personality, however, sexual personality generally refers to things like attitudes about sex, rather than to specific sexual tastes. So, there does not seem to be a lot of research on the idea, but lack of an empirical basis does not necessarily mean that the tests are not valid.
This led me to do a very unscientific test of validity — I took a whole bunch of them and saw what results I got. There was some variety in the results, but for the most part they were pretty consistent — and this was true for most sex positions (not just my personal preference). What this tells me is that either these tests are actually somewhat valid or there are some pretty well-ingrained stereotypes about sex position preference and personality out there. I find the latter to be much more likely.
Besides the fact that it seems ridiculous to trust these internet tests that seem to have no empirical basis, I have many more reasons for having this belief. For example, essentially all of these tests say that girls who prefer missionary position are boring, plain, and traditional. However, most surveys find that more women consider missionary to be their favourite position than any other position — with percentages ranging from about 20–40%. It is definitely possible that this percentage of the population is boring, but it seems unlikely. Also, is it not more likely that it has to do with, I don’t know, anatomy?
I realise that none of this is actual proof of anything and that this whole post is really just speculation, but my main concern is whether the existence of these tests causes more harm than good. I’m sure plenty of us know not to take these tests too seriously, but what about people that don’t know any better? The risk of someone feeling self-conscious about themselves, or about their sexual tastes, because of some made up, online personality test might outweigh the entertainment value of these tests. It also highlights a bigger issue — with the ease at which people can make up tests that claim to test psychological constructs and make those tests available to the general public nowadays, the risks involved with uninformed and unvalidated psychological testing hold a greater significance and are much more difficult to regulate.
Bringing it back to Valentine’s day, I just really hope that everyone is able to celebrate it (or ignore it) however they want to, without worrying about how some website says it reflects on their personality. Happy Valentine’s Day (or Saturday) everyone!
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Hart, T.A., Zheng, Y. (2012). The Relationship Between Intercourse Preference Positions and Personality Traits Among Gay Men in China. Archives of Sexual Behaviour, 41(3), 683–689.
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Student ID Number: 260456652
